Why you need to watch It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia

With Parks and Recreation, Community, Modern Family, The Office, 30 Rock, Archer,... and long-running shows like South Park on the schedules, you’re probably feeling a little like Mr Creosote when it comes to quality US sitcom. Your plate is full, your gullet is stuffed, and you couldn’t possibly manage another bite. If it’s not already part of your diet though, could sir or madam be tempted to just one more wafer-thin slice? 

The season seven finale of FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia aired in December 2011, and with two more seasons confirmed to be on their way, newcomers have plenty of catching up to look forward to. Here’s why, if it’s not already part of your TV diet, you need to watch It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

It’s the anti-Friends/Seinfeld on crack/a live-action South Park

The anti-Friends title is intended with no disrespect to Joey, Chandler et al, characters who spread seven series worth of episodes over ten seasons so well that hardly anyone noticed, it’s more of a  short-hand description of It’s Always Sunny…, a show that on the surface bears many similarities with the Central Perk sextet. Both involve a group of late twenties-thirty-somethings hanging around a public watering hole, both feature a brother/sister pair, both have beloved entertainment veterans in the role of parents (Elliott Gould in Friends, Danny DeVito in It’s Always Sunny…), but that’s about where the similarities end. 

For whether you’re broke, your job’s a joke or your love life’s D.O.A, the characters in It’s Always Sunny… won’t be there for you, unless it’s to blackmail, stalk, rob, or – if they get the chance – set fire to you. Dennis, Dee, Mac, Charlie and Frank aren’t friends, they’re selfish, vain, despicable, back-stabbing, conscience-free aberrations willing to sell their grandmothers for a dollar, paint dumpster babies to make them look Hispanic, and destroy the life of a clergyman, which is precisely why we love them. 

The “Seinfeld on crack” line is how FX promoted the series, and it’s a fair description. Imagine Elaine, Jerry, George, and Kramer huffing glue, eating cat food and smoking crack, and you’re probably at about the right tone for an episode of It’s Always Sunny…

The South Park comparison is less about tone and more about satire. In much the same way that Trey Parker and Matt Stone cut a fearless swathe through the issues of the day, It’s Always Sunny… is not one to pussyfoot around using capital T themes for comedy. North Korea’s nuclear provision, the welfare state, Jihads, child sex offenders, racism, reality TV, the homeless… they’ve all had the It’s Always Sunny... treatment, and there’s no signs of the show running out of ideas, as Glenn Howerton (Dennis) says, “There’s always some group of dum-dums doing something dumb”.

Because there’s no will-they-won’t-they tedium

A restatement of the above point, this one. Many are the sitcoms that survive largely through winding a merry path through the romantic on/off relationship of a central couple, and while Ross ‘n’ Rachel and Jim ‘n’ Pam will ever have a place in our hearts, it’s refreshing to see a show where there’s not even a hint of will-they-won’t-they about a couple of series regulars. 

Despite showrunner Rob McElhenney (Mac) and actress Kaitlin Olson (Dee) being real-life marrieds, and the same going for Charlie Day (Charlie) and Mary Elizabeth Ellis (The Waitress), at no point have Mac or Charlie fallen for Dee, largely because they think she looks like a giant bird, but also because it’s just not that kind of a show. Idiot Charlie’s infatuation with The Waitress (she’s never referred to by name, despite the gang having been to high school with her) is the closest It’s Always Sunny… comes to getting romantic, and that’s more stalking than wooing. 

Because nobody learns anything

Unlike South Park, there’s no moral centre in It’s Always Sunny…, no Stan to summarise the message of the episode with a “I’ve learned something today”, because nobody learns anything. Larry David’s much-repeated rule that Seinfeld should include no hugging or learning is probably the strongest connection between the two shows.

Charlie, for one, is a character who seems to have lived his entire life without learning anything (including extravagances like reading, mathematics, or why you shouldn’t eat the cheese from rat traps), and the rest of the Paddy’s Pub crew are just as bad, if not technically illiterate. Huge life events happen: marriages, deaths, births, and have no impact whatsoever on the show or the characters in it. Aside from a few running gags, by the end of most episodes, everything resets to how it was at the beginning, just like that other great US satirical comedy, The Simpsons. 

Because they created it

Unlike those equivalents of boy bands in comedy (when a group of actors who don’t know each other have to fake chumminess with the help of a writers’ room script), It’s Always Sunny… was created by Rob McElhenney and co-written by he, Glenn Howerton and Charlie Day (alongside others such as the actor behind recurring character Rickety Cricket, David Hornsby). The original It’s Always Sunny... quartet were friends before they were co-stars, and like similar set-ups in comedy from The League of Gentlemen to Monty Python’s Flying Circus, it really shows. The improvised dialogue, catty fights, and shared sense of humour couldn’t have been achieved in the same way if four friends hadn’t filmed their $87 pilot all those years ago.

Because FX didn’t interfere

After commissioning the first episodes, FX had the very good sense not to interfere with pesky concerns as to who was being offended once production started. That meant the creative team could push boundaries, take risks, do an entire episode in colonial period costume, and write musicals about molesting night men paying troll tolls to their heart’s content. 

Because Danny DeVito plays a glorious pervert

Arriving in season two, Danny DeVito’s Frank becoming a regular was the best thing that could have happened to It’s Always Sunny… Now an integral part of the cast, and father in some way or other to most of it, nasty, lascivious, sociopath Frank Reynolds is the unbeating black heart of the show, and for his glorious awfulness to his children and everyone else on the planet, we salute him.

Because it’s not going anywhere…yet

Firefly, My So-Called Life, tons of others… There are fewer things more annoying in TV-land than a great show just getting started and being taken off the air. Thankfully, as it’s nice and cheap to make, and it’s shown no sign of dropping in quality over its many seasons, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is going nowhere fast. Seven seasons have aired, and a further two have been commissioned, so fill your boots.